


I'm In Love With My Car

by MsThunderFrost



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Billy Hargrove Lives, Billy Hargrove Needs Love, Billy Hargrove Needs a Hug, Car Accidents, Depression, Episode Fix-it, Established Relationship, Good Friend Robin Buckley, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e08 The Battle of Starcourt, Post-Season/Series 03, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Friendship, Steve Harrington is a Sweetheart, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:47:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24333853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsThunderFrost/pseuds/MsThunderFrost
Summary: Steve’d be the first person to admit that he knew next to nothing about cars. He could change the oil, with minimal mess, and he could change a tire (with an embarrassing amount of sweat and, on one particularly memorable occasion, tears)－anything else was decidedly above his nonexistent paygrade.But he knew how much the Camaro meant to Billy, and he felt kinda bad about, y’know, totalling it, in the name of the greater good. Had broken, a bit, when he’d had to deliver the news that the insurance company had totalled the car while he was busy trying to heal the gaping hole in the middle of his chest.So Steve’d come up with the absolutely, horrendously stupid idea that he could… well, fix the Camaro.Maybe.
Relationships: Billy Hargrove/Steve Harrington
Comments: 5
Kudos: 114





	I'm In Love With My Car

Steve’d be the first person to admit that he knew next to nothing about cars. He could change the oil, with minimal mess, and he could change a tire (with an embarrassing amount of sweat and, on one particularly memorable occasion,  _ tears _ )－anything else was decidedly above his nonexistent paygrade. 

But he knew how much the Camaro meant to Billy, and he felt kinda bad about, y’know,  _ totalling _ it, in the name of the greater good. Had broken, a bit, when he’d had to deliver the news that the insurance company had totalled the car while he was busy trying to heal the gaping hole in the middle of his chest. 

He’d wanted him to scream, to cuss… to show him something,  _ anything _ other than the hollowed-out husk that the Mind Flayer had made him. He’d wanted to be selfish, wanted his boyfriend to snap back after the trauma, the horror, the near-brush with death, like he was a goddamned rubber band and not a teenage boy that had had an interdimensional space monster take up residence inside his head. He’d wanted Billy to  _ care _ .

And Billy’d just stared at him, like they were talking about the utterly abysmal summer weather, like they weren’t talking about Billy’s fucking pride and joy. 

So Steve’d come up with the absolutely, horrendously  _ stupid _ idea that he could… well,  _ fix _ the Camaro. 

Maybe.

Robin whistles, “You certainly did a number on it. Christ.” Steve frowns－he can see that, quite clearly, thank you. “How d’you know that it’ll even run?” 

“I don’t.” There is, of course, the chance that all of this is a lost cause. That he’ll dump hundreds of dollars into repairing a car that simply cannot be fixed. That’s why he hadn’t told Billy his plan. “But I－I can at least try, yeah? He’s lost everything else. This is the least I can do.”

Robin is terribly unimpressed, “You’re just as likely to blow the whole damn car to kingdom come, dingus. You don’t know the first thing about repairing cars.” And okay, yes. That is absolutely, one-hundred percent true. But there’s no time like the present to try and learn something new, right?

“You almost failed Calculus.” She says, staring at him pointedly. As if his inability to evaluate one-sided limits had any bearing on his ability to fix a car. 

“Your point?” He drags his fingers along the massive, accordion wrinkle in the hood. 

“You’ll be checking Billy into assisted living by the time you have this thing anywhere near finished.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Robin. I  _ really _ appreciate it.” 

So, he had seriously underestimated how difficult it would be to fix the Camaro. Or, rather, he’d seriously underestimated the extent of the damage he’d caused, crashing into it at upwards of fifty miles per hour. He’s not exactly sure why he’s so surprised－the goddamned engine had  _ caught on fire _ ; that sorta thing doesn’t happen from a little love-tap. But that car meant the absolute  _ world _ to Billy, so－

He could do this. He could definitely do this.

Then he’d opened the driver’s side door and found old, long-dried blood on the leather, pooled around an actual  _ dent _ from where Billy’s head had collided following the impact, and he’d staggered back, tripped over his own two feet, and lost his lunch all over his shoes. 

Billy wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. 

Billy wasn’t wearing a  _ fucking _ seatbelt, and Steve could’ve killed him. 

And it hadn’t mattered, not in that moment. He’d needed to save Nancy, Jonathan, the kids… Billy had been possessed and right then, he would’ve done anything,  _ given _ anything, to stop him before it was too late. 

That doesn’t mean that he wouldn’t have been fucking traumatized for life, had he seen his boyfriend go crashing through the _fucking windshield_ because he wasn’t wearing his _fucking_ _seatbelt_. He is fully aware that this is something that he only has the luxury of being upset over because Billy _survived_ , but… Fuck it, he’s not letting his boyfriend within one-hundred feet of the Camaro, or _any_ car for that matter, ‘til he knows for sure he’s gonna _buckle the fuck up_. Shit. 

He ends up reupholstering the entire interior of the car. Well, paying someone else to do it, technically. He can’t look at the blood without feeling physically ill, without itching to drive over to the hospital and plaster himself to Billy’s side and remind himself that he’s… okay. Or, he  _ will _ be okay. Physically, at least.

He comes to visit him in the hospital, after he puts in new doors on the passenger side (he can’t help but feel like he’s failed when he realizes he’s gonna have to paint the whole damn car, ‘cause he can’t find that  _ perfect _ shade of blue－and he hates that little part of him that wonders if Billy’ll even want it if the car isn’t  _ perfect _ , just like it was before). Billy scrunches up his nose and bitches about him reeking of motor oil.

Steve snorts, “Glad to see you too, baby. Missed your pretty face.” Billy grumbles something incoherent, but stays still, letting Steve kiss him. “The nurses’ treating you nice?”

Billy harrumphs, looking deeply offended at it all. “Won’t lemme smoke.” Neither of them mention the actual  _ hole _ in Billy’s right lung. Or the fact that Billy spent two weeks on a ventilator, in the beginning. Back when the doctors still weren’t sure if he would…

Steve takes his hand, squeezes it. Billy’s expression morphs into something tight, “You gettin’ soft on me now, princess?” He’s on too much morphine to care about much, but there’s a pain in his blue, blue eyes that breaks Steve’s heart.

“Nah. I’ve jus’... been thinkin’ ‘bout some stuff, that’s all.” Steve says, forcing a smile.

Billy fixes him with an unreadable expression as he huffs, “Don’t think  _ too _ hard now. You’ll kill off your last brain cell, and then the only thing that’ll be in that pretty little head a yours is air.” He lowers his eyes to the bed, picking at the fraying end of one of the blankets. He lets Steve hold onto him like a lifeline.

“They’re releasing me. Next week.” He says. He sounds…  _ happy _ . And scared. “I－I’m still－,”

“You’re comin’ home with me, ‘course you are.” He squeezes Billy’s hand again. “Got a special surprise for you. One that I’m  _ hoping _ will put a smile on that pretty face.” 

“‘m not a big fan of surprises, princess.” 

“Can you make an exception, for me? Just this once? I’m 99% sure that you’ll love it.” He bats his eyelashes and smiles so wide his cheeks start to shake.

Billy snorts, “The hell is wrong with you?” He shoves at Steve’s shoulder lightly, causing the plastic tubing of his IV to rattle. He’s  _ almost _ smiling, and Steve’s chest feels lighter than it has in  _ weeks _ . “And what’s this about only being 99% sure I’ll love it?” He asks, blue eyes narrowing, “Is the other 1% where I kick your ass ‘cause I hate it?”

“Um… a moderately less violent variation of that, yes.” Steve concedes.

He rolls his eyes, “I ain’t gonna break up with you just ‘cause I don’t like one little surprise.” His blue eyes glint dangerously, “You get three chances to fuck-up before I kick you to the curb. I’m  _ nothing _ if not fair, after all.”

He’s like… 79.8% sure that Billy’s joking. 

Probably.

He replaces the windshield, and installs a new engine the following afternoon. With a brand new battery, it still takes three tries before the engine turns over, but nothing  _ explodes _ , so he considers that a major win. The new hood lays flat, and he’s buffed out the last of the scratches over the front tire on the passenger side. The Camaro looks good as new, the only evidence of the accident the fact that it’s now several shades darker.

As he wipes his hands on a rag, reflecting on the sheer luck that the last of the parts had come in just  _ two days  _ before Billy was due to be released from the hospital, he somehow manages to simultaneously commend himself on a job well done and convince himself that Billy is going to hate it. 

Billy would’ve known the exact right color to paint the car. He would’ve been able to find the necessary parts cheaper, and wouldn’t have struggled so much when attempting to install them. 

Billy would resent him for sinking so much money into the Camaro. He’d see it as a hand-out, as  _ charity _ . 

Fuck. He fucked up bad.  _ He fucked up bad _ .

He drives the car around the back of the house. Knows that he won’t be able to hide it back there forever, but at least it won’t be the first thing Billy sees when they pull up. He tries to think of what he can market as the ‘surprise’－a blowjob? It’s not really all that  _ surprising _ , but it might work to distract him temporarily. Once the pain’d died down a bit, Billy’s libido had come crashing back, full-force. Steve knows this, ‘cause he bitched about it  _ at least _ once every time he came to visit.

It’s not like they could just… get down ‘n dirty on the fucking ER bed, with Billy attached to a million and one wires and still very much in the midst of recovering from a  _ hole in his chest _ . No matter how appealing the idea may’ve been. Maybe, if he was successful in sucking his boyfriend’s brain out of his dick, he’d forget about the fact that there was supposed to be a surprise in the first place. 

His plan probably woulda worked, too. Had he not forgotten that the keys to the Camaro were sitting in a little dish, right inside of his door. “...I thought that you said the Camaro was totalled.”

It’s not a question. “ _ Shit _ .” Billy is staring at him, his face curiously blank. “It－It was. Totalled, that is. I, uh…” he licks his lips,  _ really _ wishing he’d been a few seconds faster with that offer of a blowjob. “I f-fixed it. It’s nowhere near perfect: the color’s all wrong, and it takes a few tries to start up the engine, and－,”

“You…  _ fixed _ it.” Billy repeats, sounding a bit dumbstruck. He runs his thumb over the dull, metallic ridges of the key.

“I… yeah.” He rubs the back of his neck, trying to look anywhere but at Billy’s face. “I know how much the Camaro means to you, so I couldn’t just let them scrap it.” Steve smiles shakily. It doesn’t meet his eyes. “Surprise?”

“You did it… yourself?” A hesitant nod. “I didn’t know you knew your way around a car, princess.”

Steve huffs, “I  _ didn’t _ . But I… I learned, ‘cause I wanted to give you this. ‘s the least I could do, considering－,”

Billy cuts him off with an absolutely  _ feral _ kiss, knocking Steve back into the nearby railing. Steve’s far too deep into shock to respond (and his head is  _ ringing _ from where it’d collided with the railing), but that’s okay, because a second later, Billy’s pulling back, a soft blush on his cheeks as a barely-there “Thanks” escapes him like a sigh.

And then he’s walking toward the backdoor with the keys, “Billy? Billy,  _ where are you going _ ?” The backdoor opens and Steve groans, “Make sure that you wear your fucking seatbelt!”


End file.
